Kurds Claim Russia Offered Afrin Protection if Assad Given Control

If reports are acccurate, Syrian Kurds are claming that a day before the TurkReich began their Orwellian-named operation, “Olive Branch,” Russia was negotiating with the Kurds to “hand over” Afrin to Assad.

In exchange, the Russians would put the brakes on TurkReich’s Olive Branch.

As you can imagine, the Kurds refused. The Russians then gave tacit approval to the Turks to commence with their Orwellian-named operation, “Olive Branch.”

Russia urged Syrian Kurds to “hand over” the Afrin region to Moscow-backed dictator Bashar al-Assad “one day” before the ongoing Turkish assault on the territory, confirmed an official of the self-declared autonomous Kurdish administration in northern Syria.

Sinem Mohamed, the U.S. representative of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria Representative (DFNS), made those comments on Monday, a day after the Kurdish administration reportedly accused Russia of backing Turkey’s attack on Afrin.

During a Kurdish Policy Research Center (KPRC) event held at the National Press Club, she declared:

One day before the attack of Turkey, Russia with the [Assad] regime, they have a dialogue with our leaders there [Afrin], and they asked them to hand over Afrin to the regime so that they can take it back and after that, they can protect it, defend it.

…

When we refused because we don’t want the regime to come back again to our region … just the next day they [Turkey] came and they started killing the people and the civilians.

DFNS, also known to the Kurds as Rojava, refers to the de facto autonomous Kurdish region in northern Syria, mainly controlled by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG).

On January 20, Turkey launched an assault, dubbed Operation Olive Branch, against the Kurdish-held Afrin region, prompting the YPG to defend the territory.

Ankara has long considered the YPG an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which both Turkey and the United States has designated as a terrorist organization.

A day after the Turkey attack on Afrin began, the Associated Press (AP) reported, “Three Kurdish officials have said that Russian military officials have proposed handing over a Kurdish-ruled enclave in Syria’s northwest to the Syrian government to avert a Turkish military offensive.”

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